I've lived here since August of 2006 and have watched this place go down hill over the last year. I'll be moving out once my lease is up.

The staff in the office is not very friendly and doesn't seem to understand their responsibilities and expectations. They recently got a new employee "Brian", that seems to be receptive and courteous from the few times I have dealt with him. I'm not sure how Christine has managed to keep this job so long. It's obvious she has no clue what she is doing and drops the ball constantly. Donna, who is the office manager likes to pretend she listens to the tenants but in the long run she falls short. There seems to always be some sort of last minute plan to roll out a new idea to the tenants (For our benefit *joke*). On several occasions you'll receive a notice that so and so is coming on a certain date (Normally the next day) to do some work. Well, this person doesn't show up. Which causes you to plan for something that never happens. A good example of this is when they were replacing the carpets in the main hallways of our building. I came home on a Tuesday to find a notice under my door informing me that on Wednesday someone needs to be available to let the carpet installers open the dor to finish the carpet installation. If no one was available a member of the management staff would open the door for you. This never happened... The carpet installer didn't actually come back until the following Monday. Good thing I didn't take time off for work. Another example is the "parking stickers" idea. We receive a notice under our door that due to the congestion with the parking they are going to implement parking stickers and that everyone needs to come to the office immediately and get their sticker. This was 4 months ago, I still haven't gotten a sticker and there was never any follow up in regards to what the stickers actually do. I see that other tenants went and got the stickers because I ca see them on their vehicles but there's no reason to get one. They are not enforcing any type of parking.

Parking is a problem. I live in the Groton building and this means that potential tenants and staff park in our spots all the time. Many times I have to park in front of other buildings because all the spots are taken even at night after the staff leaves. Once the wintier rolls around, forget it. They've gotten a different snow removal company over the last year or two and these guys suck. Most of the time they didn't show up until late in the afternoon. And the snow is plowed into huge piles that are never removed. Last year we had so much snow that pretty much every building lost half of it's parking due to too much snow. The first year I lived here they removed snow once it built up, meaning it was put in the back of a truck and hauled off somewhere.

Infested with roaches. Yes, roaches not stinkbugs. The staff asks me every time "Are you sure it's not stink bugs'" I've called every month for the last 3 months letting them know my apartment needs to be sprayed. If they miss a month I will see 3 or 4 roaches a day crawling on countertops or walls. I have spoken with other tenants and they also said there is a bug problem. Instead of doing a full building spraying they spray only the apartments that call and complain and they only spray one month. You'll need to call every month to keep the bugs away or else they'll be back. This is normally the result of someone else calling and having their apartment sprayed, making the roaches look for another place to go.

This place is noisy! The landscaping company is here almost every day doing something. You would think they place would look better than it does. If you ever stay home from work sick or want to sleep late on a Saturday forget it. You're going to have a lawnmower, weedwacker or some type of industrial machinery noise going ALL day long.

Once that finally tapers off you'll be dealing with the noise from your neighbors. The walls are so thin that even the quietest of tenants will annoy you. I have been woken up at 2am by my neighbor across the halls microwave timer. My other neighbor snores and I can hear him almost every night. The neighbor above me seems to be a 50 professional couple. I know they are not running around but I can hear every step they take. This means when they wake up at 5am and step off the bed I'm rattled as if someone just dropped a 50 pound weight on the floor above me.

The gym. Don't let them fool you. They have 2 bikes from 1982. Neither of them have electronics that work. I'm not positive the second one is even electric. It may be so old that it doesn't plug in to anything. You just do the flintstep and hope you're burning calories. Honestly, people throw bikes away that are in better shape. A stair-climber that I've never seen anyone use for anything other than to hang their jackets on. I'm not sure this even works. 2 treadmills, one of them the tracking is off so bad it skips on you. This is so dangerous as you end up walking or running right into the front of the machine. The second treadmill somewhat works. The computer is broken so the counts are not accurate. The weight doesn't go above 160 and the speed is way off. On most treadmills I have used a good walking pace is about 3.5 to 4.0. In order to get close to that same speed you'll need to set this machine at 6 or 7. For walking, that's fine but the speed caps out. So if you want to run on it you're going to need a number higher than the machine will allow. There is an eliptical machine that seems to be okay, but since the treadmills have both been broken for the last six months this machine is getting a lot of use. I expect it to be down soon as well. There are some free weights and some sort of "all-in-one machine" (Think generic bowflex) that get's very little use. These machines are not maintained at all. If they were they would be in working order most of the time. There is poor ventilation in the gym and a there are a lot of people with bad body odor that do go. If you do take a chance and try to brave out the gym I advise not eating before you go. The smell has been enough to make me leave almost immediately. Unlike most gyms there is nothing to clean the machines with when you are done using them. You can imagine the bacteria on these machines. Gross!

There seems to be a lot of different cultures and ethnicity here. More so than most places I've lived in. I've heard it referred to from other tenants as "Middle-East Crossing" before. This doesn't bother me much, but it's worth mentioning in a review.

Although it's conveniently located to route 3 it is terrible to get in and out of during working hours. You have a lot of businesses on Middlesex turnpike as well as Middlesex Community college down the road. Some days I can easily add ten minutes onto my drive just trying to get out of the parking lot.

Drainage.. Expecting flooding if you are on the first floor. Not just from outside but also from the backup in the toilets and showers. I've been told by maintenance that the main drainage pipe is old and needs to be replaced but it won't be replaced due to costs. If you are coming to check out an apartment let the water in the bathroom sink run for a few minutes and see how quickly it drains. I try to wash my face in my sink before bed and in a matter of minutes my sink is almost full because it drains so slow.

I have to say the maintenance team is really responsive and seem to be the only ones who really understand what the tenants are dealing with. I can honestly say there has never been a time when I felt the maintenance staff wasn't doing there best. I've even called in after hours late at night and they were very responsive. They have a lot of cards stacked against them with the old buildings. They really seem to care about the tenants.

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